Could Be Big Boon For UAVs

What the defense industry hopes will eventually turn into a multi-billion dollar industry got off the ground earlier this month when NASA announced a $100 million program to put UAVs in the air over the US.

"The ability to enter national airspace is going to be a fundamental change to aviation," said NASA's Jeff Bauer, the project manager.

The idea is to put UAVs in the sky above 40,000 feet. There, above most manned air traffic, they would be allowed to join general air traffic. They would also fly as low as 18,000 feet. At those altitudes, the aircraft could monitor border areas or check for forest fires, industry officials said. The industry envisions drones eventually moving cargo across the country.

Right now, it takes a virtual act of Congress to get a UAV into skies over the US. In the case of an earthquake or dam bust, getting the proper clearances could take as long as two months. But not too long ago, the FAA gave the Air Force clearance to fly its Global Hawk with almost no restrictions. All the Air Force has to do is file a flight plan five days in advance and keep the machine above FL40.

Most of the $100 million in this program will come direct from NASA. But the aerospace industry, including Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp., is expected to contribute an additional $30 million to $40 million. The program will develop technology, simulation tests and policies governing the planes' use of the national airspace.

But UAVs have a reputation for coming back to Earth when least expected. Or so says Washington. In the Kosovo campaign, 10 times as many UAVs were downed as were manned vehicles.

The FAA says drones should be required to meet the same safety standards as commercial aircraft. That should include enhanced crash-avoidance software, said John Mazor, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association. He said NASA has not yet provided details of the program. "There will be an awful lot of concerns that have to be satisfied" before drones can go into widespread use, Mazor said.

So the program will spend a lot of its money on technology development. That would include developing technology to enhance a drone's ability to detect another aircraft and avoid it, said NASA project manager Bauer. At first, industry executives say UAVs will be able to detect signals sent from commercial jets' transponders so the pilot on the ground can avoid nearby traffic.

"You're not going to be able to utilize these things effectively if they cannot be used safely," Bauer said.

But there's potentially a dark side to the use of UAVs over American airspace. What about privacy? If the unmanned aircraft are used for public surveillance, the American Civil Liberties Union becomes downright worried, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Program on Technology and Liberty.

"The technological reality is that the government has the equivalent of Superman's X-ray vision, and these unmanned planes are an example of that," he said. "Do we want to live in a society where drone planes ... are constantly monitoring our every activity? That's the question we're going to have to answer."

FMI: http://uav.wff.nasa.gov